Mindfulness in the classroom: How children are being taught the value of positive thinking in schools

17 July 2017, by The Floatworks

“If every 8 year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.”

He may have been speaking with a smidge of hyperbole, but The Dalai Lama touches on an important point. As adults, we have long been finding more and more ways of coping, preventing and treating the anxieties and mental health issues that plague us as a society, but it’s only relatively recently there’s been a shift in focus in introducing mindfulness, meditation and the like to our children.

In recent years, thankfully, we’ve seen a credible rise in schools across the globe making positive changes to tackle this worldwide epidemic. From England to Dubai, curriculums are introducing mindfulness classes, meditation sessions and more to the daily routine of their kids, and evidence so far seems to show it’s helping.

Further afield, one English-language school in the Middle Eastern kingdom of Dubai is taking a whole new approach to education. Instead of grades and exams at the end of each semester, pupils are graded red, amber, or green in a range of different areas, so next term’s teachers know more clearly their strengths and weaknesses for the month ahead. In one class, Gulf News reports, pupils sat silently with their eyes closed, tuned into whatever sound they could hear – the hum of the air conditioner, or the sound of their breath. One of many mindfulness practises they utilise at GEMS Founders in Dubai before the kids hit the books for the more conventional periods of study.

Over in the US state of Baltimore, Robert W Coleman Elementary School is replacing punishment with… meditation! Instead of being made to write lines, or sit in the principal’s office, or spend extra time after hours in the classroom closely monitored, disruptive kids are taken to the Mindful Moment Room, where they’re encouraged to go through simple meditation processes to help themselves calm down and re-centre. Then, they’re asked to talk through what happened, so they better understand their emotions or reactions to a given situation. The program is one of many run by the Holistic Life Foundation in the area, which has dozens of other projects in schools encouraging mindfulness, meditation and even yoga in kids!

The trend for mindfulness in schools is going global, then. But we’re not there just yet. There are ways you can encourage mindfulness classes in your children’s curriculum – write to their school, get in contact with one of the many charities in the UK like Youth Mindfulness or Mindful Schools, and of course, you can show them the basics at home, too!

And for those kids who need a bit of technology to get to grips with something, there’s a great Headspace for Kids app, and the Mindfulness For Children app is a simple introduction to the practice, too.